. >> that's right. ng, everyone. >>> also on the first state visit to israel, the president is speaking out about the civil war in syria as the u.s. investigates whether or not chemical weapons have been deployed in the crisis-stricken country. andrea mitchell is in jerusalem now with the latest. good morning, andrea. >> reporter: good morning. well, the president is telling israel it will protect it from any use of chemical weapons and also warning the assad regime that it would be a major incident, that if the assad regime were to use chemicals, it would be taking military steps against it. but there is no evident yet, according to u.s. officials here today, that that actually happened on tuesday. that incident, it could have been some form of noxious gas that was used for crowd control by the regime. but the president said in a joint news conference with prime minister netanyahu yesterday that there's absolutely no evidence and he completely rejects the regime's contentions that it was the opposition